


She Was Not Mine

by hilaryfaye



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Fem!Kozmotis, Gen, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 14:02:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilaryfaye/pseuds/hilaryfaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I refuse to accept that these memories are mine. They are phantasms. They are ghosts of someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Was Not Mine

I don’t want to remember, but I can’t help it. 

I am Pitch Black, I tell myself. It’s all I’ve ever been. I am the monster under the bed, the thing that creeps in the shadows and sends you nightmares. Fear is all I have ever been.

But I know better. Much as I hate to admit it, I can feel that memory lurking at the back of my mind. I push it away, because remembering would do me no good. I am not what I was, I can never again be that. Remembering would not undo all the things I have done, remembering would not earn me forgiveness.

I do not want forgiveness, anymore than I want pity.

Why should I remember?

But the memory creeps back whether I want it or not, slipping past my best defenses. I must remember that memory whispers. I must, I must. 

No, I don’t want to!

I must.

I remember the smell of leather, and sweat. I remember armor that at best felt like a shield, at worst felt like suffocation. I remember tying back my hair out of my eyes, face steeled. I must not show them that I am afraid.

I must seem brave so that they will feel brave too.

I push the memory away again, holding my head as if it aches. But it’s not my head that hurts, it’s my heart. My heart that is still there, no matter what the Guardians believe. I have been lonely, but loneliness is better than remembering. Remembering would only bring more pain.

I am Pitch Black.

But you are more than that, aren’t you?

No. No, I don’t want to remember.

I remember the burning in my muscles, the sweat on my skin. The dancing just out of reach of your opponent. The finesse of a sword but how I always loved that damn scythe. I remember the warhorns, the battle cry. I remember all the universe laid out before me, how the stars smiled at me.

No, no that was never me. I am a monster. I am the Boogeyman. I don’t want to remember.

You must.

I remember my brothers and my sisters in arms. I remember their smiles, if not their names. I remember their screams, too. 

I remember their deaths.

I remember the grief mixed with hatred, how I swore vengeance on the darkness that took them. I remember how the stars whispered among themselves. Vengeance was not in my nature.

Was it?

That was not me. That was a woman by another name. I was not her.

Her name was Kozmota. 

But that was not me.

You must remember.

The memories claw their way up, fighting for the body that was so long denied to them. I retaliate, shrieking like an animal wounded. I am the darkness, the fear, the one thing in the world that cannot be hidden from. I want to hide from myself.

But no, no, I refuse to accept that these memories are mine. They are phantasms. They are ghosts of someone else.

I remember a little girl.

No, she was not mine.

She had my eyes, my hair, her father’s crooked smile.

No, she was not mine. I was not her mother. 

You must remember.

She was so fierce. She wept to see me go. 

But I had to go. I had to fight the darkness, to keep her safe. I had to do what no one else could. For her, for all the friends I’d lost.

“I have to go. I’m sorry.”

She was not mine. I was no one’s mother.

Remember. 

But I can’t. I can’t bear to remember. Remembering changes nothing, it does not bring back those I lost. It does not bring back those that I myself killed. It does not undo the crimes I committed, does not reel back in the Nightmares and Fearlings I so happily unleashed.

I do not want it.

I missed her. I missed her so terribly, all those years standing at that gate. No one could do what I did. No one could have withstood the Fearlings for so long.

But all have their weaknesses. They broke me.

They broke me and took me and remade me in their own image.

Kozmota Pitchiner they made Pitch Black.

They stole me away, stole me away from everything that I loved. For them I destroyed what I had fought so hard to protect. For them I captured, tortured, killed. For them I sought to consume the world with darkness.

I do not want to remember.

But I must.

And I remember her, most of all. My little girl. My sweet-faced girl with my eyes who could not bear to see me go.

Where is she?

What happened to my daughter?

That’s the one thing, no matter how hard I try, that I do not remember.


End file.
